Routledge Knowledge & Power in the Global Economy: The Effects of School Reform in a Neoliberal/Neoconservative Age (Sociocultural, Political, and Historical Studies in Education)

The second edition of Knowledge and Power in the Global Economy examines how neoliberal and neoconservative policies are working in tandem to privatize and commercialize public schools. It looks at how these policies and the agendas behind them have impacted the internal dynamics of school management, teaching, and learning, as well as how they have transformed the external dynamics of education from a public good or service offered to serve public interests to a private enterprise primarily serving private interests. In addition to information, critique, and analysis, multiple perspectives are provided that readers can draw upon to formulate an alternative vision of education as a crucial element of social change along democratic and egalitarian lines. The first edition of this volume provided a critical encyclopedic approach to the rhetoric of educational reform as it developed from the 1980s through the 1990s―critiquing its vocabulary, elaborating the multiplicity of ways that the logic of neoliberalism and the emerging patterns of high stakes testing and accountability were impacting the curriculum, and introducing ideas associated with alternative and liberatory educational projects. Since its publication in 2000, policy developments, such as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 in the U.S. and others in the U.K. and other parts of the world, have nationalized and intensified these patterns, deepening the logic and extent of neoliberalism’s hold over educational reforms. At the same time, it is impossible to understand the current crises in education solely in terms of neoliberalism; the impact of neoconservatism must also be considered. Hence this second edition has a new subtitle: The Effects of School Reform in a Neoliberal/ Neoconservative Age. This edition is structured around five themes: Political and Social Foundations Anti-Educational Foundations: The Set-Up Anti-Educational Foundations: The Trap Classroom Consequence Democracy’s Path. This volume will particularly interest scholars and professionals across the fields of educational foundations, curriculum theory, and educational policy, and is well suited as a text for courses in these areas. Review “This is an important and necessary book. The list of contributing authors includes a stunning array of insightful and widely published and referenced critical scholars and educators. [It] offers readers an opportunity to better understand how contemporary educational policies fit within the broader aims of neoliberal and neoconservative agendas.... Differentially skilled and  socially/politically/culturally neutered and compliant human capital is now the production focus of neoliberalized education systems and institutions, hand in glove with and enforced by an neoconservative ideology and state.... But there is resistance.... There are people who want a more human and more equal society, a society where students and citizens and workers are not sacrificed on the altar of profit before all else.... This book feeds that resistance!”—Dave HillUniversity College Northampton